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Feb 14, 2019

US judge rules ex-Trump campaign chief breached plea deal

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul
Manafort breached his plea agreement with Special Counsel Robert
Mueller’s office by lying to prosecutors, a federal judge ruled on
Wednesday.
The ruling concludes weeks of wrangling between Manafort’s lawyers and
the special counsel over whether he had intentionally lied to
prosecutors, impeding their investigation into Russian interference in
the 2016 US election and possible collusion between Russia and the Trump
campaign.
US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is overseeing the Manafort
case in a Washington court, found there was a “preponderance” of
evidence that Manafort lied on three different topics, including his
communications with his former business partner Konstantin Kilimnik, but
she cleared Manafort of allegations that he intentionally lied on two
other subjects.
The ruling follows last week’s release of a court transcript that showed
Mueller’s team believed Manafort’s alleged lies were central to their
investigation into potential collusion, which Trump and Russia have both
denied.
The investigation appears focused on a meeting held at the height of the
election campaign between Manafort and Kilimnik, whom prosecutors say
has ties to Russian intelligence, according to the court filing.
Mueller contends that Manafort lied about the number of times he and
Kilimnik discussed a “Ukrainian peace plan” — a reference to a proposal
that would result in the US lifting sanctions on Russia, one of the
Kremlin’s top objectives.
In a court filing ahead of Wednesday’s ruling, Manafort’s lawyers
repeated their argument that their client never intentionally lied to
prosecutors and stressed that he corrected any mistakes once they were
pointed out to him.https://www.geezgo.com/sps/53931